Tag Archives: Fiscal Austerity

Roundup: Protections for the steel sector

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Mark Carney was in Hamilton yesterday to announce plans to help the steel industry given the state of the Trump tariffs, which largely consisted of protectionist measures to support the industry from cheap imports being dumped into our market—particularly if they are looking to use Canada to avoid the US tariffs. To that end, countries that Canada has free trade agreements with can continue exporting to Canada up to 2024 levels, after which point they are subject to 50 percent tariffs. Countries who don’t have trade deals—including China and India—are subject to the 50 percent tariff once they hit 50 percent of 2024 levels, and anything coming from China is subject to an additional 25 percent tariff, unless they are coming from the US. There is also a $10 billion loan programme for liquidity support, and more measures for EI support and retraining steelworkers. The industry is largely happy with this, but do note that some free trade countries still dump steel in our market. (Full breakdown of measures here).

Carney also said that any potential trade deal (which isn’t going to happen) could include quotas on softwood lumber as a way of resolving that long-standing issue, but remained vague and non-committal about it.

Meanwhile, Carney is telling Crown Corporations and government-funded entities to “find your own savings” of up to 15 percent, which is going to be pretty hard when most of them are already operating bare-bones. Canada Post is on the verge of bankruptcy, VIA Rail doesn’t have a lot to cut if it’s trying to recapitalise for the proposed High-Frequency/High-Speed Rail expansion, and he told CBC he would boost their funding as he’s now telling them to find savings. There are some exemptions, like the courts (which are already largely underfunded), and Parliament, but this kind of austerity is not going to be good for anyone, whether in the short or long-term, and he needs to start thinking about a course correction because this is going to further reduce capacity to do anything in this country.

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia attacked Ukraine with over 400 drones early Wednesday, and later in the day, bombed Dobropillia while shoppers were out in the early evening, killing two and injuring over 27. Trump giving Russia 50 days to come to a ceasefire just means Russia will spend the summer trying to keep wearing down Ukraine. President Zelenskyy says he wants at least half of Ukraine’s weapons to be produced domestically within the next six months.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1945532910058054106

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Roundup: Absolving the provinces, child care edition

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Because this is sometimes a media criticism blog, let’s talk about the absolute bullshit framing of The Canadian Press’story about the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives’ report into the state of the early learning and childcare programme. The headline: “Ottawa set to miss 2026 deadline for establishing $10-a-day child care: report.” This is wrong. It is not “Ottawa” or the federal government who are going to miss the deadline. It is a number of provinces and territories who will, and yes, that matters.

The report makes it quite clear from the start who is responsible: “Provinces, territories and Indigenous governing bodies have the main responsibility for implementing CWELCC, with the federal government providing much of the funding and high-level policy considerations as it does with Medicare, housing, and other social programs under provincial or territorial jurisdiction.” Nowhere in the report does it assign blame or responsibility to the federal government for the goals not being met. It’s quite explicit about which provinces are meeting their targets and which are not, and if there is a particular issue levelled at the federal government, it’s that the goal of an “average of $10/day” is not the same as a $10/day cap, and that it’s an imprecise and problematic concept. But that’s not how the CP story frames the issue.

This goes back to one of the constant problems in Canadian media, where every problem is blamed on the federal government, and so long as they provide funding to the provinces for programmes that the provinces are responsible for carrying out, then somehow the federal government is assigned a disproportionate share of the blame. Indeed, who does CP reach out to for comment? The federal minister’s office, and not the provincial ministers in those lagging provinces, when it’s their gods damned responsibility, not the federal government’s. And this pattern keeps repeating itself over and over again, and we wonder why provincial governments are never held accountable for their failures. This is one prime example right here. And yes, this CP wire copy was distributed in pretty much every other outlet with the same misleading headline, and that same headline and framing were used in television interviews on CTV News Channel throughout the day. I wish I knew why it’s impossible for legacy media to have a basic grasp of civics, but they refuse to, and this is what we end up with. It’s unacceptable.

Today or any day, really.

— Dale Smith (@journodale.bsky.social) 2025-07-09T15:31:50.296Z

Ukraine Dispatch

Russia’s attack on Ukraine early Wednesday was the largest yet, at 728 drones and 13 missiles. The attack early this morning has thus far reported two deaths and 13 injuries.

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Roundup: A major far-right terror arrest

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The big news yesterday was that four people were arrested and charged in terrorism-related charges for plans to start an anti-government militia, and to violently seize land near Quebec City for their own purposes, and more to the point, that two of those charged are serving members of the Canadian Forces, and not reservists as we have seen in the past. They were also heavily armed and had a number of explosive devices prepared—and it was likely the largest number of weapons and devices seized in a terror-related event in Canadian history.

I can’t speak to the nature of the plot (too few details) but this is the largest amount of weapons and devices seized as part of a terrorism incident in Canada. Ever.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T14:20:46.149Z

Details are still scarce, but former CSIS analyst Jessica Davis has some particular observations.

Not small time: "Searches conducted in January 2024 in the Québec City area led to the seizure of 16 explosive devices, 83 firearms and accessories, approximately 11,000 rounds of ammunition of various calibres, nearly 130 magazines, four pairs of night vision goggles and military equipment."

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:19:41.537Z

This is an ideologically motivated plot. In Canada, 77% of terrorist attacks have been carried out by ideologically-motivated actors: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/rising-thr…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.504Z

Over the last two decades, however, most terrorism charges have been laid against religiously-motivated terrorists. That has slowly been changing, with more ideologically-motivated individuals getting caught: newsletter.insightthreatintel.com/p/terror-on-…

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T13:29:30.505Z

They do point to the ideology — anti-government extremism. And there's a long history in Canada of breaking down our terrorism into different categories. (ideological, political, and religious). There's a lot to criticize the RCMP about, but this is not top of the list.

— Jess Davis (@jessmarindavis.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T20:09:49.002Z

Another issue here has to do with the military not doing an adequate job of investigating the full extent of far-right extremism in their ranks, in part because they refuse to let outsiders do the investigating, as Leah West demonstrates in this thread. Some of this has to do with an insistence on cleaning up their own messes, but, well, their history on that score has not been great given the sexual misconduct problems and abuse of power scandals they have been dealing with over the past couple of decades. There is still work to do, and it doesn’t help when things happen, such as the commander of the Canadian Army saying he wasn’t notified about certain army members posting to an “abhorrent” Facebook group during the investigation into it.

There is much about this story that is staggering. But the inclusion of military members while deeply troubling is not surprising. A story:I was part of the RWE CAF research network funded by the Department of National Defence to study IMVE in the military for three years 2020-2023.

— Leah West (@leahwest-nsl.bsky.social) 2025-07-08T22:30:36.625Z

Ukraine Dispatch

The only real Ukraine news today is that Trump is planning to resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, feeling hurt that Putin was bullshitting him, but more concerningly, says he doesn’t know who ordered the shipments to stop (because he’s clearly not running his own show).

https://bsky.app/profile/united24media.com/post/3ltixwozuor2a

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Roundup: A committee prepares to express its dismay

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The Commons’ transport committee will be meeting sometime this summer over the BC Ferries decision to buy new electric ferries from China and not Canada, never mind that no Canadian company bid on the project (likely because the major shipyards are already full-up on the naval and Coast Guard orders that will keep them occupied for years to come, which was the whole point of the National Shipbuilding Strategy). Of course, because this decision is actually in provincial jurisdiction, as transport minister Chrystia Freeland said time and again in Question Period before the House rose for the summer, the Conservatives on the committee needed to find a different angle of attack.

Enter the Canada Infrastructure Bank. It provided a loan to BC Ferries before the deal was signed, that covers both a portion of the capital costs, as well as electrification infrastructure for the ships themselves. Never mind that the Bank operates at arm’s length from government—the fact that it still reports to Parliament via a minister, Gregor Robertson in this case, means that Robertson and Freeland are going to be summoned to explain themselves, even though they have no hand in these decisions, no should they. The federal funds that go to BC Ferries is for operations and not capital costs, btu the Conservatives seemed to think that this should somehow be weaponised as well. (Oh, and BC premier David Eby said that he wants the committee to look at how unfairly the federal funding is allocated between BC and the Atlantic provinces, never mind that the Atlantic ferries are mostly interprovincial, which makes them a federal responsibility as opposed to BC’s, which is solely within the province’s jurisdiction).

So, what exactly do we expect to happen? I can pretty much guarantee that every party, the Liberals included, will spend the meetings expressing their dismay at BC Ferries’ decision, even though no Canadian firm bid on this contract. The ministers will express dismay, the MPs on the committee will all preen for the cameras, each expressing their dismay and sometimes outrage that these jobs are going to China and not Canada (never mind that no Canadian firm bid on this contract). It will be one big circle-jerk of dismay, while the CEO of BC Ferries will probably appear to say that the Infrastructure Bank loan is a loan that needs to be repaid, and that no Canadian firms bid on this contract. And everything will be done in service of clips for social media, because that’s all Parliament is any more.

Ukraine Dispatch

There is at least one dead and over 71 wounded in drone attacks on Kharkiv, as well as a death following an attack on Odesa and more injuries following a drone strike on Zaporizhzhia. Many of those attacks continued to be aimed at military recruitment offices in order to disrupt intake of new fighters. Trump says he’ll start sending more weapons to Ukraine, but who knows how long it’ll last this time.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1942141632620495134

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Roundup: Trying to falsely blame CTV

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At his media availability yesterday, Pierre Poilievre was asked if it was responsible for him to declare the explosion on the Rainbow Bridge in Niagara Falls to be “terrorism” before anything was confirmed. And what did Poilievre do? True to form, he attacked the Canadian Press reporter asking the question (including lying about the substance of the corrections that a recent CP story made to a story about comments he had made), then lied about why he said “terrorism.” Poilievre claimed this was from CTV reports, and tried to get the CP reporter to try and denounce CTV. The problem was that CTV didn’t publish anything before Poilievre began his questions in QP. And what we do know is that Fox News was definitively calling it terrorism, as were several disinformation merchants who pose as journalists over Twitter. But rather than admit that these were his sources, Poilievre lied, continued to lie, and then post the video of him attacking the CP reporter to his followers, because right-wing populism has a huge hard-on/wide-on for putting people in their place (particularly if they’re vulnerable minorities or someone they suffer no repercussions for attacking, like media).

And then things got stupid online, as Poilievre’s fans and apologists kept trying to “prove” that CTV was still the source, really, relying on screenshots that came from a different time zone. And at least two MPs shared these screenshots before they were called out and deleted them.

I will say that between these lies, and the ones he has been telling about the Canada-Ukraine trade deal legislation, it seems to finally shaking up some legacy media outlets to actually start calling him out on them. Somewhat. Some outlets are still egregiously both-sidesing the lies, as they always do, but you had Power & Politics host David Cochrane finally interjecting in places saying “That wasn’t true,” or walking through the timeline of lies in the case of yesterday’s attempt to blame CTV. It’s not nearly enough, but it is a start, but we’ll see how long it can actually last.

Ukraine Dispatch:

A daytime cluster bomb attack in a suburb of Kherson in the south killed three people. Ukraine’s farmers are hoping that the Black Sea trade corridor will help them get exports to market so that they can survive.

https://twitter.com/ukraine_world/status/1727681997076644088

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QP: Mendaciously torquing a boneheaded comment

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The prime minister and his deputy were both in town today, but absent from the Chamber as QP got underway, while the other leaders were all present, which is actually quite unusual for a Monday. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, lying about the carbon price, and then calling on the “second carbon tax,” which doesn’t exist, to also be cancelled, with a mention of Quebec and the Bloc thrown in there. Steven Guilbeault insisted that the government has been consistent, ask that any party that wants to be in government needs to deal with climate change while tackling affordability, and that the Conservatives have nothing on offer. Poilievre switched to English to claim that Trudeau was huddled in the foetal position, sweating about Poilievre’s “Axe the Tax” rally, before he paused the carbon tax on heating oil. Jonathan Wilkinson pointed out their heat pump programme for people to take advantage of. Poilievre raised Gudie Hutchings’ media interview when she talked about other areas of the country needing to elect more Liberals and suggested that the Liberal MPs were useless in other areas. Wilkinson again got up to insist that they had programmes for everyone. Poilievre kept going about how useless those Liberal MPs from other cities were, and this time Karina Gould got up to praise the rebates. Poilievre demanded breaks for other provinces, and accused the prime minister of dividing the country. Gould raised the previous “common sense conservative” government in Ontario that gutted programmes people needed.

Yves-François Blanchet led for the Bloc, and he demanded an extension of the repayment period for CEBA loans, to which Rechie Valdez read her script about the added flexibility they offered for repayment. Blanchet was not satisfied and demanded that full extension, decrying the effect on “real companies.” This time Marie-Claude Bibeau got up to repeat the same points in more confident, extemporaneous French.

Jagmeet Singh rose for the NDP, and he demanded that the GST be removed on all home heating—something which disproportionately benefits the rich. Wilkinson suggested that Singh needs to do his homework and repeated the points about the national programmes. Singh switched to French to raise Doug Ford and the Greenbelt before demanded the government build not-for-profit housing. Guilbeault pointed out that he was opposed to Ford’s plans, and that they signed agreements with province to protect more natural areas.

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Roundup: Openly pursuing creeping illiberalism

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You may have heard mention of a lavish trip that Conservative MPs took to London courtesy of a Hungarian think tank, but as you might expect from Canadian legacy media, the focus remains on the costs of the trip, and the stupid little partisan games in trying to get the ethics committee to look into it. What isn’t being mentioned is the fact that the think tank, the Danube Institute, is closely tied to the Orbán regime, and that is a worrying problem because of what it signals about right-wing parties in North America cosying up to Orbán.

Why this matters is because Orbán is undermining the rule of law and public institutions in Hungary, and is praising greater illiberalism. By cosying up to Orbán while has-beens like Stephen Harper try to sanitise his image through his IDU social club is because it creates a permission structure for right-wing parties like the Conservatives to start normalising the same illiberalism, pretending that this is all standard stuff for small-c conservative parties these days. The “don’t say gay” legislation in the US all came from Orbán’s playbook, and that is crossing over into Canada as well, with Conservatives openly winking and nodding to it, while you have conservative premiers invoking the notwithstanding clause to take away the rights of gender-diverse youth. This is the canary in the coal mine.

On the subject of creeping illiberalism, Conservatives (and MP Rachael Harder in particular) tried to get the public accounts committee to haul the CBC executives before them to “explain” why they don’t use the term “terrorist” when referring to Hamas, never mind that this is a practice shared by other news organisations like the BBC and The Associated Press. This kind of attempted intimidation is absolutely out of order, and represents political interference in the public broadcaster, which would be bad enough it Harder wasn’t the one always screaming about so-called “government censorship” with the Online Streaming Act and the Online News Act, as though that were a credible problem. It’s not, but it also seems to be both projection and an admission, that they want to control the news and programming, while accusing the Liberals of doing so (even though they absolutely are not). This is extremely dangerous for our democracy, and we should absolutely beware what they are trying to get away with.

Ukraine Dispatch:

While the attacks on Avdiivka continue, Russians struck an apartment building in Zaporizhzhia and killed two people. Ukraine has claimed responsibility for an attack on two Russian airfield in occupied areas using longer-range ballistic missiles quietly provided by the Americans, which is an unusual admission for them, but also signals that they can now hit Russian supply lines in more protected areas.

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Roundup: More apologies for past honours

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In the wake of the black eye that Canada collectively received after former Speaker Anthony Rota’s embarrassing blunder in recognising the Nazi-aligned veteran in the House of Commons, there has been some more soul-searching institutions around similar figures that that particular veteran. The University of Alberta returned a donation from said veteran to be used for their Ukrainian Studies programme, but more problematic for the institution was their former chancellor, Peter Savaryn, who was in the same Waffen-SS Galacia Division unit, and now Rideau Hall has apologised because Savaryn had also been granted the Order of Canada back in 1987, citing limited information sources at the time.

This has led Jewish groups in particular to call for the government to open up the archives related to the Deschene Commission, which looked at potential war criminals who resettled in Canada after the war, but a great many of their findings were redacted and kept secret. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that senior bureaucrats are reviewing the Commission report, and considering making more of it public. But this is also being used as a political wedge. Conservative deputy leader Melissa Lantsman is demanding the government take action on this, but meanwhile, one of her own MPs, Gérard Deltell, was saying in the media that he doesn’t think they need to revisit this history, that the past should remain the past.

But this isn’t necessarily a black-and-white issue, particularly for some Ukrainian communities in this country because they saw those people as nationalists who were using any means necessary to fight the Russians, who had already invaded and subjected them to a genocide—the Holodomor—and one suspects that Cold War considerations meant that it was in our interests to focus on the anti-Soviet aspect of their records during that period. But there are also a number of monuments to those Waffen-SS Galacia Division units across this country, particularly in private Ukrainian cemeteries, because of that complicated history, and it’s something we should have a national conversation and perhaps reckoning about sooner rather than later. But we need to be aware that this is fraught territory, and will be difficult for some.

Ukraine Dispatch:

Ukraine has carried out a drone strike on a Russian defence complex over the border in the Belgorod region, which is a rare admission of such an attack. This as Russians are claiming that they shot down a major Ukrainian drone offensive on their border regions. Meanwhile, the IMF says that Ukraine’s economy is expected to keep growing next year.

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Roundup: A cut or not a cut of the defence budget?

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Yesterday morning, the CBC had a story about the department of national defence looking to cut $1 billion from its books as part of the government’s ongoing spending review, and people lost their gods damned minds, both in Canada and in some international venues. The story was based on comments that were made at committee by the chief of defence staff and the deputy minister, and they talked about how it was going to be challenging to meet these reductions while worrying about capabilities. This was a bit of a surprise, because Anita Anand had previous said that defence was going to be exempt from her cost-cutting demands, but the comments from General Eyre and the deputy minister sounded like DND volunteered to do their share (which I always treat with suspicion—the previous Auditor General made his own pledge to do his part to make cuts as part of the Deficit Reduction Action Plan™, and lo, wound up delaying badly overdue IT upgrades that his successor needed to beg Parliament for more resources to deal with). And because this is not my first rodeo, I immediately presumed that what this likely means is the accounting game of shifting certain spending into future years or re-profiling some committed dollars that they can’t spend (because they simply don’t have the capacity to spend their current allocation), but a whole lot of people who should know better freaked all the way out.

This came up in Question Period, and Bill Blair was present, but he didn’t really answer the question—he took a swipe at the Conservatives for their record of cutting defence spending to below 1 percent of GDP (indeed, here’s a look back in history of Harper complaining to Peter MacKay that he didn’t cut the military enough) and then read some bland pabulum that didn’t even approach answering the question—because that’s what this government does. It wasn’t until nearly 4 PM that Blair posted a thread to Twitter about how they were still increasing the defence budget, and these $1 billion in savings were internal measures like cutting back on travel and consultants, but noted the spending commitments they’ve made like NORAD modernisation, and ships and planes, and so on.

It absolutely mystifies me as to how this message-obsessed government took almost eight hours to craft a response to this news story that when they could have shut down the hysterical reaction to it in mere minutes had they simply sent out a similar tweet first thing in the morning. There is nothing in there to demonstrate why it took eight hours. They could also have had Blair give a reasonable response during QP that would have simply said “This reporting is exaggerated, we are looking for some efficiencies, but overall defence spending is still increasing,” and it would have defused everything. But they didn’t, either because they’re inept, or it takes them that many hours to get sign-off from Katie Telford’s office, which is a sad sign about where this government is at. But nearly eight hours for this kind of response to the story is unacceptable, and it’s a real-time demonstration in why things need to change at the top with this government.

Ukraine Dispatch:

The first American Abrams tanks are being delivered in the eastern front, in the hopes they will make a difference. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy marked the 82nd anniversary of the Babyn Yar massacre by Nazi forces.

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QP: Return of the carbon price mendacity

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While the prime minister was away at an EV battery plan announcement in Quebec, his deputy off in Toronto, and other leaders were also absent. Chris d’Entrement was again in the big chair for the day, even though one would think they would rotate Alexandra Mendès in there as well. Pierre Poilievre led off in French, accused the prime minister of looking like “a clown” around the world, called Rota a “Liberal Speaker,” railed that it took him five days to say anything, and then repeated it in English in the same question. Karina Gould said that everyone agreed it was the Speaker who was responsible and he resigned. Poilievre then accused the prime minister of creating “the middle-class hungry” and demanded they cut the carbon price. Anita Anand stood up to wonder if the Conservatives would support their bill on cutting the GST on rentals and increasing competition. Poilievre then called out Atlantic Liberal MPs who say that they have concerns about the carbon price while at home but not while in Ottawa. Randy Boissonnault accused the Conservatives of looking to cut programmes and let the planet burn. Poilievre rambled about the supposed “NDP coalition” before demanding they vote for their Supply Day motion to cut the carbon price. Boissonnault repeated his same response about the Conservatives only looking to slash and burn. Poilievre then returned to French to call out the Bloc leader for voting to increase the carbon price (which is not entirely true). Pascale St-Onge insisted that what doesn’t make sense is a party that doesn’t have a climate plan.

Yves-François Blanchet got up and wondered why the Conservatives wouldn’t axe subsidies, before wondering why the prime minister still hasn’t called president Zelenskyy or Jewish leaders. Gould said that calls were made, and that the prime minister apologised to everyone harmed. Blanchet insisted that the headlines would have been different if the prime minister had apologised immediately (which would have given Rota cover), and Gould repeated that calls were made and apologies were made through diplomatic channels from the beginning.

Alexandre Boulerice rose for the NDP, and he demanded that the government end all new fossil fuel projects and move the net-zero date up to 2045. St-Onge insisted that they have brought emissions down since 2018, and that they would do more. Boulerice the worried the chaos caused by changing insurers for civil servants, and Anita Anand insisted that they were working with the leadership and Canada Life to ensure the situation was rectified.

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